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Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#11

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

metalmanac wrote: post #10

Getting the first hundred users in itself is not hard, post to forums where your users hang out and you'll be at 100 users fairly quickly. The hard part is getting users to keep coming back to your site aka engagement. The best advice I have come across to get your initial users : do things that don't scale [0]. Yeah, everyone read that post by PG but a surprisingly small number of people actually apply it to their o…

Ok, I bite. I went to your site and then clicked to learn javascript. There is a short description about javascript and then a couple of links to javascript tutorials. What now?

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#12

Post by whrect »

danielfoster wrote: post #8

I wrote a passionate blog post made the front page of a major subreddit. The story was then syndicated across a few other large blogs in my niche. This resulted in 3,000 sign-ups in a few days-- much more than I had expected! I've also found reddit ads to be quite useful if you take the time to craft relevant ads and quickly nix ones that do not perform.

OT: Just saw that your company Pixsy is registered in the US and in Germany but based in Germany. Is the US Inc the top company or the German GmbH? Why did you choose that setup and is it working out for you?

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#13

Post by GoToRO »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #9
Kiro wrote: post #5

Facebook ads are always really effective for me to build some initial traction.

Clever Facebook ads are definitely effective. Approach it like 99% of FB advertisers, however, and you'll undoubtedly lose money.

Please, define clever. I installed fb pixel and it made a huge diference. What else?

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#14

Post by breeze_em_out »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #11
metalmanac wrote: post #10

Getting the first hundred users in itself is not hard, post to forums where your users hang out and you'll be at 100 users fairly quickly. The hard part is getting users to keep coming back to your site aka engagement. The best advice I have come across to get your initial users : do things that don't scale [0]. Yeah, everyone read that post by PG but a surprisingly small number of people actually apply it to their o…

Ok, I bite. I went to your site and then clicked to learn javascript. There is a short description about javascript and then a couple of links to javascript tutorials. What now?

Well, your browser info and metadata have now been sold to third parties for a few pennies, so I'd say mission successful for site owner.

Are people actually still this naive? Reading HN users makes me feel like I'm trapped in the 80s where the internet was a magical mystery that nobody really understood. It's about 40 years too late to just assume the average trash website is actually a meaningful statement about something, or a viable product of some sort.

99.9999999% are just junk. The big ones, you already know about.

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#15

Post by metalmanac »

_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #11
metalmanac wrote: post #10

Getting the first hundred users in itself is not hard, post to forums where your users hang out and you'll be at 100 users fairly quickly. The hard part is getting users to keep coming back to your site aka engagement. The best advice I have come across to get your initial users : do things that don't scale [0]. Yeah, everyone read that post by PG but a surprisingly small number of people actually apply it to their o…

Ok, I bite. I went to your site and then clicked to learn javascript. There is a short description about javascript and then a couple of links to javascript tutorials. What now?

This is exactly the problem users are having. Since the purpose of the site and how it works is buried in the About page, people are clueless about what to do next. I am redoing the front page to only focus on explaining what the site is about.

The idea is this :

* provide a community reviewed wiki explaining what X is about and how to go about learning it. The aim is to answer the questions how to learn X programming language/framework/platform and what are the best resources to use.

* provide a Stackoverflow like QA section for users to ask and answer questions.

* provide a forum to submit and discuss learning resources (like HN)

* provide a chatroom to replicate the IRC experience

As you can see this I have completely failed to convey this. So that's what I am working on now : to convey the purpose of the site and improve the UX and UI. Reason for completely failing at this : I focus too much on the tech, the backend, unnecessary optimizations and time wasters like load testing.

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#17

Post by Jillboy »

metalmanac wrote: post #10

Getting the first hundred users in itself is not hard, post to forums where your users hang out and you'll be at 100 users fairly quickly. The hard part is getting users to keep coming back to your site aka engagement. The best advice I have come across to get your initial users : do things that don't scale [0]. Yeah, everyone read that post by PG but a surprisingly small number of people actually apply it to their o…

Well, what IS the site about? I read your post and went to the website and spent a good 15 seconds trying to figure out what it's about.

Easy fix is just take what's on the About page, strip it down to its bare essence and slap it on the landing page, on top of the search bar but in a way that it stands out (i.e. it should be the first thing users will read).

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#18

Post by ronstethson »

pawelwentpawel wrote: post #16

If you are distributing an early-access of your product first, the first 100 users could be beta testers. I have gathered an initial community of people using my app by posting to directories like betalist.com, betapage.co etc.

That is a great strategy. These beta users might be less critical if the app does not work the way it is supposed to work too. So this takes a big pressure off the shoulders of the developers.

As a follow up question: Can you share some sites/sources which you would recommend.

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#19

Post by Doches »

I’ll second the PG advice: do things that don’t scale is by far the most effective tool I’ve found for finding _and keeping_ users. I’m building small-business tools for fringe retail [0] as a side-project, and those users are usually more than willing to at least investigate new apps if they even have a chance of solving some real problem their business faces. Emailing them personally with a pitch based on a few minute’s research into their business reliably generates leads — and meticulous hand-holding through the first few weeks usually convinces them to stick around.

People are used to paying for software from Intuit or Microsoft or whatever; offering to build (tiny! like, 5-minute one-offs!) features _just for them_ sort of blows their minds. And those features almost always make the product better, usually in a way that I would never have thought of.

I’ve also had pretty great success with an old-school hack: I use an affiliate marketing scheme to turn our most enthusiastic users into mini sales reps. For every new customer they can sign up that converts, I credit their account with a few free months. It totally won’t scale, but it helps me grow into markets where I can’t physically travel out and do sales in person.

[0] https://quailhq.com

Re: Ask HN: How did you acquire your first 100 users?

#20

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

metalmanac wrote: post #15
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I bite. I went to your site and then clicked to learn javascript. There is a short description about javascript and then a couple of links to javascript tutorials. What now?

This is exactly the problem users are having. Since the purpose of the site and how it works is buried in the About page, people are clueless about what to do next. I am redoing the front page to only focus on explaining what the site is about. The idea is this : * provide a community reviewed wiki explaining what X is about and how to go about learning it. The aim is to answer the questions how to learn X programmin…

It's a decent idea. I think a problem will be that you are trying to compete too much with stackoverflow.

* "provide a community reviewed wiki explaining what X is about": http://stackoverflow.com/tags/javascript/info

* "provide a Stackoverflow like QA section": http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/javascript

* "provide an chatroom to replicate the IRC experience": http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/17/javascript

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